Physicians: 45,000 Americans Die Each Year for Lack of Health Insurance
Talk about death panels! Physicians for a National Health Program is calling attention to a just releases–and very shocking–Harvard study that found…
Nearly 45,000 annual deaths are associated with lack of health insurance. That figure is about two and a half times higher than an estimate from the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in 2002.
The new study, “Health Insurance and Mortality in U.S. Adults,” appears in today’s online edition of the American Journal of Public Health.
The Harvard-based researchers found that uninsured, working-age Americans have a 40 percent higher risk of death than their privately insured counterparts, up from a 25 percent excess death rate found in 1993.
In an e-mail blast, the doctors group calls for President Obama to “start from scratch”: to ditch the unpopular, badly thought out, solves-nothing proposals floating through Congress and bring the US into alignment with the rest of the developed world: a single-payer health care plan.
And the group’s leader, Steffie Woolhandler, M.D., M.P.H. of Harvard University, gave a great interview on this on Democracy Now.
Retired Senator (and former presidential candidate) George McGovern notes in a recent op-ed that all it would take is a one sentence law, extending Medicare coverage to all Americans.
I think all these folks are correct. I’ve been saying for months that the time for single-payer (something I started supporting in 1979, when I was a community organizer for the Gray Panthers and this was their main plank) is NOW.
If you’re in the US, tell your Senators and Congressional representative. And tell your state government to push for it.
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Mike, thanks for your comment. Of course Congress has to vote the thing in…but Obama has plenty he can do. Presidents propose legislation all the time, and the stuff he’s talking about is wimpy and won’t work.
If he pushed single-payer the way Clinton pushed NAFTA (or GW Bush pushed the Iraq war and the Patriot Act), and if he built grassroots support nationwide through organizing and publicity campaigns, we’d have a rather different scenario.
Mike, thanks for your comment. Of course Congress has to vote the thing in…but Obama has plenty he can do. Presidents propose legislation all the time, and the stuff he’s talking about is wimpy and won’t work.
If he pushed single-payer the way Clinton pushed NAFTA (or GW Bush pushed the Iraq war and the Patriot Act), and if he built grassroots support nationwide through organizing and publicity campaigns, we’d have a rather different scenario.
Putting the responsibility on Obama for the content of the law is nonsense. The president doesn’t write the law! Only the Congress can do that! Were you sleeping during Political Science 101? If the votes aren’t there for the single payer option, THEY AREN’T THERE! The president’s only legal power is his veto! The Docs are WRONG to focus on the president! The Senate and House is the place to focus on. That is where the corruption is from special interest groups. The people must rise up and support those lawmakers who act in their best interest. Otherwise, single payer just isn’t going to happen.
Putting the responsibility on Obama for the content of the law is nonsense. The president doesn’t write the law! Only the Congress can do that! Were you sleeping during Political Science 101? If the votes aren’t there for the single payer option, THEY AREN’T THERE! The president’s only legal power is his veto! The Docs are WRONG to focus on the president! The Senate and House is the place to focus on. That is where the corruption is from special interest groups. The people must rise up and support those lawmakers who act in their best interest. Otherwise, single payer just isn’t going to happen.
RT @DotComExpert – https://bit.ly/14H3Nj Physicians: 45000 Americans Die Each Year for Lack of Health Insurance https://tinyurl.com/my6fr8
RT @DotComExpert – https://bit.ly/14H3Nj Physicians: 45000 Americans Die Each Year for Lack of Health Insurance https://tinyurl.com/my6fr8
https://bit.ly/14H3Nj Physicians: 45000 Americans Die Each Year for Lack of Health Insurance https://tinyurl.com/my6fr8
https://bit.ly/14H3Nj Physicians: 45000 Americans Die Each Year for Lack of Health Insurance https://tinyurl.com/my6fr8
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